Many, if not all of us, are required to work remotely. The ability to complete our work while on the go is essential to not conceding deals to our competitors. The need for sales and professional services resources to urgently access company data from outside the office is more prevalent than before, as is the need to ensure remote access is secure.

You’ve heard of software as a service and its benefits, but is it going to work for your organization, and do the benefits outweigh the disadvantages? The term “software as a service” has been thrown around the IT world for the last 10 years, and over the last few years has gained consumer momentum. But now more than just software is being offered as a service, including hardware/infrastructure (IaaS), storage (SaaS), and pretty much anything you can think of (XaaS).

We have been interviewing job candidates for a couple of openings we have, and it looks like there is finally a positive shift towards a growing talent pool. With the predictions of unprecedented new job growth in the region, many employers have been worried about a shortage of qualified employees, but the latest batch of resumes we have been reviewing include more out-of-town candidates than we have ever seen.

This time of year is always difficult, and I assume there are many others that feel the same way. Gift buying, especially for Valentine’s Day, always seems like an impossible feat achievable by only the most practiced gift givers. I am not one of those people. Thankfully the constant strides in technology provides us a huge landscape of products to choose from. These are some of gifts I thought would be good, from budget-friendly to the more expensive.

I am a big advocate of giving the gift of technology during the holiday season, and this year the choices are endless. So rather than making a list of items to consider I thought I would focus on what everyone has or needs — the computer and accessories.

I am addicted to the latest technology gadgets and trends, especially those that are tied to my personal interests like photography, digital entertainment, automation and business. It seems like I never get tired of trying to figure out what the next innovation will bring and how it will impact our lives and business. In that light let’s take a look at a few technology trends and see how they are becoming intertwined between work, home and each other.

Technology has provided the tools to do the basics better, faster and more precisely. But those tools are only tools and they require sophistication, user training and regular sharpening to do the job of running basic business functions and provide the data necessary to manage operations, sales and client satisfaction.